04:29 PM EDT, 04/09/2024 (MT Newswires) -- US benchmark equity indexes closed mostly higher Tuesday, as investors looked forward to official March consumer inflation data and minutes from the Federal Reserve's latest monetary policy meeting, scheduled to be released Wednesday.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.3% to 16,306.6, while the S&P 500 advanced 0.1% to 5,209.9. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was little changed at 38,883.7. Real estate led sector gainers, while financials and industrials posted declines.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are likely to show Wednesday that the US consumer price index rose 0.3% sequentially and 3.4% annually last month, according to a Bloomberg-compiled consensus.

The CPI data will be "paramount" in helping determine the monetary policy path ahead, Macquarie said in a Tuesday note. "It's exactly because US labor-market indicators are so ambiguous (hiring data is strong, but hiring surveys are weak) that makes the US inflation data so much more important as a driver of the outlook for Fed policy in the next few months."

The US producer price index for March is scheduled to be released Thursday.

The US 10-year yield dropped 6.8 basis points to 4.36% Tuesday, while the two-year rate declined 5.1 basis points to 4.74%.

At its latest meeting in March, the central bank's Federal Open Market Committee held its benchmark lending rate steady at 5.25% to 5.50%, its fifth consecutive pause, and maintained expectations for three cuts this year.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell recently said most policymakers expected that it would be appropriate to start reducing interest rates at some point in 2024, though more evidence was needed that inflation is easing.

Small business optimism in the US declined in March to the lowest level in 12 years as owners expressed increased concerns about inflation, the National Federation of Independent Business' latest survey showed.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil fell 1.3% to $85.33 per barrel Tuesday.

In company news, Moderna ( MRNA ) shares rose 6%, the top gainer on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, after results from an early study of the company's cancer vaccine mRNA-4157 showed the therapy benefited patients with a type of head and neck cancer.

Boeing ( BA ) logged steep annual declines in its deliveries for March and the Q1 amid ongoing quality checks and investigations by regulators. The plane maker's shares fell nearly 2%, among the steepest drops on the Dow.

Gold rose 0.8% to $2,370.10 per troy ounce, while silver jumped 1.7% to $28.27 per ounce.